Although agroforestry (integrating trees or shrubs on pasture or crop farmland) has great potential to provide ecosystem services and address multiple climate change challenges, it is not widely practiced in the UK. Strategic planning and successful implementation require more knowledge on achieving optimal environmental benefits, balanced with information of the associated socio-economic, cultural and policy incentives, barriers, and challenges to increasing agroforestry. Bringing together a strong multidisciplinary team of social and environmental scientists with partners who are practitioners and stakeholders in woodland and agricultural organisations, the FARM TREE project addresses these needs by exploring which planting scenarios might work best under different combinations of environmental and socio-economic conditions. Hereby, we will evaluate planting strategies (e.g., regional or landscape priority areas or species), as well as farm level planting designs (species and spatial organisation of planting) within the context of different strategies. Providing knowledge on which planting scenarios realistically work best where, combined with tools and pathways on how to achieve this will: (1) improve farmer decision making, (2) aid the development of better targeted and more flexible policies and grant schemes, and (3) ultimately lower barriers for tree expansion on farmland. We take a holistic approach to benefits and inherent trade-offs and consider that tree planting decisions are subject to diverse factors, from the personal to the policy level; but also focus in on carbon sequestration and water use solutions, alongside wider environmental benefits. We will provide an interactive web-based decision support tool to guide tree expansion on farmland; and identify how public policies (regulations, grant schemes) and market-based measures interact to incentivise (or deter) planting. The research will be articulated around three integrated work packages (WP). In WP1, we will collate socio-economic incentives and barriers from the land manager perspective, building on existing UK initiatives and farmer networks of project partners in agroforestry. Using participatory research methods, WP1 will identify farm level opportunities and constraints to integrate trees using designs that fit well into farming systems. At the national level, we will focus on insights relating to strategic policies that create opportunities for agroforestry expansion. WP2 will investigate the spatial and temporal effects of agroforestry strategies and designs on water and carbon cycling at the national/landscape and farm scale, while also considering soil health and biodiversity. For diverse landscape and farm settings, it will identify planting scenarios that deliver optimal ecosystem services, now and under future scenarios. This will be achieved via integrated ecohydrological and carbon modelling and build on previous woodland landscape capability mapping for ecosystem services and data from demonstrator farms. Integrating outcomes from WP1 and WP3, it will also deliver a set of scenarios that consider socio-economic constraints alongside the environmental benefits. WP1 and WP2 are fully integrated via WP3, which involves the iterative development of viable tree planting scenarios on farms that consider socio-economic and environmental aspects within UK landscapes. Co- developed with project partners and stakeholders, decision support tools (interactive website for farmers; policy briefings; and recommendations for long term farmer-led innovation monitoring labs) form key outputs.

We will develop a data science of the natural environment, deploying modern machine learning and statistical techniques to enable better-informed decision-making as our climate changes. While an explosion in data science research has fuelled enormous advances in areas as diverse as eCommerce and marketing, smart cities, logistics and transport, health and wellbeing, these tools have yet to be fully deployed in one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, that of mitigating and adapting to climate change. This project brings together world-leading statisticians, computer scientists and environmental scientists alongside an extensive array of key public and private stakeholder organisations to effect a step change in data culture in the environmental sciences. The project will develop a new approach to data science of the natural environment driven by three representative grand challenges of environmental science: predicting ice sheet melt, modelling and mitigating poor air quality, and managing land use for maximal societal benefit. In each motivational challenge, there is already an extensive scientific expertise, with intricate models of processes at multiple scales. However this sophisticated modelling of system components is usually let down by naive integration of these components together, and inadequate calibration to observed data. The consequence is poor predictions with a high level of uncertainty and hence poorly-informed policy making. As new forms of environmental data become available, and the pressures on our natural environment from climate change increase, this gap is becoming a pressing concern, and we bring an impressive team to bear on the problem. A key theme of the project is integration, developing a suite of novel data science tools which work together in a modular fashion, and with existing scientifically-informed process models. By building a team that spans the inter-disciplinary divisions between data and environmental scientists we can ensure the necessary interoperability of methods that is currently lacking. Working with the full range of stakeholder environmental organisations will enable continual co-design of the programme and training of end-user scientists to ensure a reduction of the skills gap in this area. The resultant culture shift in the data literacy of the environmental sciences will enable better decision-making as climate change places ever greater strains on our society.

Art at the Start have been offering arts therapy and messy play sessions to promote the health and wellbeing of parents and 0-3 year old infants in art galleries across Scotland, supported by the Mobilising Cultural and Natural Assets to Combat Health Inequalities scheme. During our project, we have managed to reach families who don't traditionally visit art galleries and have helped parents who have had difficulties bonding with their children to connect to their children in the context of shared art making. We have evidenced positive changes in the quality of family wellbeing via questionnaires, interviews and observations of family interactions which focus on the experience of the infant. By tailoring provision to local needs and demographics, and specifically seeking to engage under-served communities (minoritized ethnic groups, those living in poverty, young mothers, infants), we have actively broken down established barriers to accessing the arts. Our project has been listed as an example of best public health practise and won several public engagement prizes. Our team are active in the UK wide movement to support infant mental health. The NHS rely on community spaces to help them provide the first line of support for families with young children who are struggling with their wellbeing, but don't yet qualify for urgent clinical care. However, there is a lack of guidance concerning how community providers and NHS stakeholders can work together to deliver early interventions effectively and sustainably. Government think-tanks across the UK agree that it is critical to improve links between community services and mental health services for infants and their families within the NHS, including testing and evaluating models for future service development. Giving children the best start in life is important, because our parents teach us how to interact with others, and the love they provide is essential for us to develop academic and social competence. Poor starts in life can be passed down through generations, and early years interventions offer a way to break this cycle. Critically, since both early relationships and access to the arts have been shown to have protective benefits for health and wellbeing throughout the lifespan, art-based early years interventions stand to have a long-term impact on the lives of the families they reach. The proposed research reflects on whether art-based approaches can be embedded within arts venues as a referral route for infant mental health provision in the UK, ensuring early access to the health benefits of arts. We propose to bring together academics working in psychology, art therapy, arts & health, arts education and midwifery with a range of non-academic stakeholders, including families, family arts and support organisations, arts galleries and NHS infant mental health teams. Led by a community parent researcher and a participation officer from a charity which supports parents, we would aim to evaluate the experiences and needs of families who may benefit from the health and wellbeing outcomes of a community embedded art & health service. Supported by an interdisciplinary team of academics and clinicians, a family arts organisation, and representatives from art galleries and third sector and NHS infant mental health teams, our research team would map existing art-based interventions for early years relationships across the UK. Case studies from two clinicians based within infant mental health teams in Scotland would help to inform the challenges of embedding such services in an NHS context. By facilitating knowledge exchange between this interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary network of academics, clinicians, families, cultural organisations and government and NHS structures, our ultimate aim is to co-produce a research 'road map' to allow for strategic reshaping of cultural assets in the service of public health, targeting the foundations of mental wellbeing.

Detrimental effects of air pollution on child health include altered function of the lungs, brain and heart and can begin during fetal development. Therefore, pregnant women have a unique position in efforts to understand and lessen the adverse effects of air pollution. Past years have seen a focus on outdoor pollution from traffic and industry but recently attention has moved to the effects of indoor air pollution. Most people spend more than 90% of their time indoors where they are exposed to pollutants from things like frying foods, wood burning stoves and to the chemicals in clothing, furniture and cleaning products. Outdoor air pollutants also accumulate in the home especially in the colder months; exposure to indoor air pollutants also occurs at work, in school and other places we visit. The little information we have about the effects of indoor air pollution exposures during pregnancy suggests that they have negative effects on the developing baby affecting birth weight and lung function; other effects have not been studied. Our studies are designed to determine how air pollution exposures of pregnant women pass to the baby to affect organ development and poor health in childhood. By sharing our findings with local and national government, business, charities and the public we will provide them with the evidence to make changes to policy and practice that will eventually reduce the ill-effects of pregnancy air pollution exposures on child health. We will study the effects of airborne materials on different biological samples collected from pregnant women at different trimesters, not pregnant women and men. These samples will include nasal samples as a source from the airways that is safe to use in pregnancy, peripheral and umbilical cord blood, placenta and sperm and we will develop a human lung model. Samples will be exposed to PM2.5, components of house dust and volatile organic compounds, such as the chemicals found in cleaning products, alone and in combination including with other airborne materials such as pollen and viruses. This will enable us to track the passage and propagation of the response to airborne materials from the maternal airways, through the circulation to the placenta and fetus. We will measure changes in gene, protein and metabolite expression to determine if the toxicological response made differs in pregnant women. To elucidate the link between these toxicological responses and fetal organ development we will study animal models in parallel to determine what effects the maternal exposures are having. We will also study pregnant women in the community to gather data about their indoor environment. This will be linked to already gathered data about the outdoor environment and to other data collected routinely about all of us such as health data to help us understand how pregnant women change their use of indoor and outdoor environments over pregnancy and what this means for birth outcomes and later health of the child. We will collect biological samples such as nasal fluid, blood, urine and placenta from women in this cohort to see if these tissues from women with natural exposures share changes in gene, protein and metabolite expression with our laboratory models. Overall, this approach will reveal pregnancy-specific toxicological responses to airborne materials that can affect the developing offspring. All participants will be from diverse backgrounds, geographical areas and socioeconomic circumstances incorporating the lowest to highest potential exposures within the UK ensuring broad applicability of our findings and revealing the effects of health inequalities. Our activities will be supported by citizen science and vigorous management structures to ensure cohesive UK-wide consortium activities. The unique insights garnered will shape guidelines and policy and provide a step change in the implementation of behaviours and interventions to truly engender long-term health benefits for children.

The energy supply sector is undergoing massive technological changes to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the climate is progressively changing creating new challenges for energy generation, networks and demand. The Adaptation and Resilience in Energy Systems (ARIES) project aims to understand how climate change will affect the UK gas and electricity systems and in particular its 'resilience'. A resilient energy system is one that can ensure secure balance between energy supply and demand despite internal and external developments such as climate change. The physical changes in climate up to 2050 coincide with the energy sector moving towards a low-carbon future, with massive renewables targets, new smart grid infrastructure and more active demand management. As such, it is of importance to identify whether new technology and policy strategies for reducing emissions also imply changes in energy system resilience. A particular concern is that increasingly large renewable energy targets aimed at decarbonisation may create new vulnerabilities given the weather-dependency of renewable energy sources. With affordable, secure energy critical to the UK economy it is imperative to fully understand the risk posed by changing climate for the energy supply sector and its infrastructure. ARIES will develop new methods to model the impacts of climate changes on current and new energy generation technologies and understand its effect on gas and electricity demand. It will identify the impacts that these new supply and demand patterns have on energy system resilience and will suggest changes or adaptation that can 'build-in' resilience.